Pairing two Denver-based creatives from different industries, disciplines, or mediums, Union Hall creates a platform for generative conversations and new discoveries. From curators to chefs, writers to graphic designers - tune in monthly to learn from the creators shaping Denver's arts and culture about their work, their community, and what keeps them connected to our city.
Panelists: Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Author (Sabrina & Corina); Carissa Samaniego, Visual Artist
Live stream to YouTube on October 27th at 6:00pm with a Q&A portion at the end
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
Kali Fajardo-Anstine (she/her) is from Denver, Colorado. The author of Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Bingham Prize, The Clark Prize, The Story Prize, the Saroyan International Prize, and winner of an American Book Award, she is the 2021 recipient of the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been honored with the Denver Mayor’s Award for Global Impact in the Arts and the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association Reading the West Award. She has written for The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, ELLE, O: the Oprah Magazine, The American Scholar, Boston Review, and elsewhere, and has received fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and Tin House. Fajardo-Anstine earned her MFA from the University of Wyoming and has lived across the country, from Durango, Colorado, to Key West, Florida. She is the 2022/2023 Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University.
Carissa Samaniego
Carissa Samaniego (she/her) is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Colorado (USA). Her artwork explores the intersection of place and identity through family traditions, generational knowledge, natural history, and cultural ephemera based on her own experience of growing up between strikingly dissimilar environments: a reserved rural community on the prairie in the upper-Midwest and a Nuevomexicano family rooted in the borderlands of the Southwest for the past twelve generations. She exhibits throughout the United States and at an increasing number of locations in Europe and Asia. Recent project sites include Galerie Klatovy-Klenova (Czech Republic), Kidwelly Industrial Museum (Wales), Franconia Sculpture Park (MN), and the Border Art Residency (TX). In 2022 she looks forward to two Denver-based projects with Platte Forum and Redline’s INSITE fund.